OVATION USERS GROUP: More tools, more features, fewer connections

Ovation scope expands

There
were reasons why David Farr, chairman/CEO of Emerson Corp, parent to Emerson’s
Power & Water Solutions (PWS) business, delivered the opening address at
the annual Ovation Users Group Conference, held in Pittsburgh, July 29 – Aug 2.
At least one could speculate, reading between the lines, that it had something
to do with financial issues of peer group industrial conglomerates making
headlines.
First, he offered five bullet points on what it takes to sustain leadership:

Be secure in yourself but never become
arrogant.

Do more listening than talking.

Trust your moral compass and promote truth and
integrity.

Take calculated, well-thought out risks.

Continue to learn and drive for change.

While
these were geared towards personal leadership, the implications for corporate
leadership are obvious.

Farr
also talked about winning and commitment, specifically how PWS President Robert
Yeager set out a plan 20 years ago to be Number One in this business and how
Emerson corporate unwaveringly committed to the power and water sectors after
its acquisition of Westinghouse Process Control in 1997. “Bob knows how to
win,” Farr said. And from the humorous bantering that went on between Bob and
David, it was clear that losing isn’t well-tolerated in the Emerson C-suite.

Without
speaking to it directly, Farr reminded the audience of hundreds of Ovation™
users, and prospects and partners, that Emerson is [IT] not [RM] having the
same commitment issues as several other behemoth OEMs of the power industry. “The
industry is under a lot of stress,” he noted. He went on to describe
inexpensive electricity as a competitive weapon and that the industry has to be
totally predictable. It wasn’t hard to think up a few big names which haven’t
exactly behaved “predictably” in recent years.

The path forward

Yeager
took the stage after Farr and used his time, as he often does, to assume
bragging rights for the successes of the last 12 months. This year, however,
there were some very notable distinctions.

“We’ve
introduced more new products in the last three years than in the history of
PWS,” he said (Fig 1). The Ovation version of the “digital twin” now includes
over 200 algorithms to simulate systems using real-time data and for monitoring
performance and health of equipment. Making the automation platform smarter is
one way to address what Yeager identified as the Number One issue facing
industry executives (according to a popular annual survey): the aging
workforce.

He
claimed Ovation being Number One globally. Some of the evidence:

Ninety-three of the 130 1000-MW supercritical boiler units in China have Ovation automation.

Three-hundred Ovation systems were added to the global roster in 2018.

The company now has completed over 400 GE gas- and steam-turbine control retrofits and 30 Ovation generator control systems.

There are 1.3-million MW of generation capability with Ovation automation, 450,000 MW in the US. Note that these numbers are similar to what was reported last year.

Twenty-nine Ovation “embedded simulation” projects have been completed and 33 are in progress.

The first wind turbines are being controlled by Ovation, anchored by its new Compact Controller (formerly the OCC 100, Ovation’s answer to the PLC), and the company has announced recent new-build solar project awards, its first grid-scale storage project, and a unique “grid controller” project in Hawaii.

Perhaps
the most interesting announcement, given the times we live in, is that Ovation
has been designated as “qualified anti-terrorism technology” by US federal
government authorities, which provides significant legal protection to Ovation
users whose systems were deployed beginning Jan 1, 2009.

As
if to reinforce Farr’s emphasis on commitment, Yeager observed that the
competitive advantage afforded by technology is short-lived and “customer
service is where the edge is found.”

Building out the platform

For
the hard-core Ovation geek, Steve Schilling, VP technology/R&D, rattled off
some of the advancements and improvements in the platform—such as “harmonized
Ethernet Link Controller protocols,” “microsecond loops with integrated I/O,”
“updated hardware platform,” and many others.

The
broader messages for the non-geeks included these:

Ovation is “getting rid of connections” which makes the system more reliable, and native prognostic, performance monitoring.

Analytic applications are being built into Ovation embedded simulation and the process historian. Schilling noted, for example, that future releases will incorporate advanced pattern recognition (APR) models directly in the Ovation I/O modules, will be integrated with the PlantWeb digital ecosystem, and identify specific fault conditions and recommendations for staff.

Like string theory

Of
course, with digital transformation comes digital vulnerabilities. Cybersecurity
continues to suck up more and more of the oxygen in the room. In fact,
Schilling likened the cybersecurity dimensions of patch testing, the matrix of
supported products, chain-of-custody compliance, device control, asset
inventory control reports, and domain “trust relationships” between Ovation and
customer corporate IT managers to string theory in physics. “It has 28
dimensions,” he joked.

Jaime
Foose, who heads PWS’s cybersecurity and customer services group, noted that the
organization now has close to 40 professionals devoted to 24/7 telephone
support for customers in North America and Latin America. Delivering on a
promise from the 2017 Users Group, Foose announced the availability of the
“Preventive Maintenance Guide,” with example checklists for system lifecycle
support, segmented by workstations, controllers, network, I/O, the Power and
Water Cybersecurity Suite, and others.

Foose
added some gravity to Schilling’s 28 cybersecurity dimensions. A slide with
dozens of cybersecurity firm “brands” for various protective functions (Fig 2)
comes across like a work of modern art—each individual brand disappears into a
chaotic blur. The underlying message? Leave it to Emerson’s cyber experts who
understand both IT security and power generation, unlike pure IT firms. Plant
managers may want to benchmark their cybersecurity activities to the broad
levels and actions shown in Fig 3.

Results speak
volumes

As
in past years, the industry breakout sessions included user presentations
illustrating the benefits of different aspects of the Ovation automation
platform.

Case history 1

A
3750-MW combined-cycle facility, with three 3 × 1 units installed between 2009
and 2011, needed faster start times and implemented Ovation’s advanced startup
automation features. The plant already had experienced close to 650 total GT/HRSG
starts in 2018 by the time of the meeting, and the number is projected to
surpass 1000 annually going forward. Automating overnight cycling of all nine GT/HRSG
trains, with onsite modifications incurring no outage time, is saving close to
$1-million in fuel costs alone.

Now
there’s “one button for a pre-start, and one button for a GT start,” according
to the owner representatives making the presentation, and “we’ve gone from hundreds
of clicks per start to 11 clicks!” They reported that operator acceptance was
the most difficult challenge, but now operators use it every day.

The
plant has reduced hot-cycle startup fuel consumption by 18%. In addition, each
start is “more consistent” and involves much less overall financial risk (Fig
4). Even with six-sigma training for plant personnel to improve cycling
performance, too much variability was exhibited across the different plant
operations teams.

Other
benefits from the upgraded controls include $300,000 per combined-cycle unit
from model-predictive control of superheater and reheater temperatures, $600,000
across the units from model-predictive NOx control and reduced ammonia
consumption, 47-MW/min load ramping through model-predictive unit load control,
tighter control over the automatic duct-burner system, and efficient
comparisons of operator start signatures.

The
new techniques were installed, tested, and proven out on one train, then
replicated across the other trains. The project took 30 months from conception
to completion, noted the owner reps, but an Emerson manager clarified that a
“standard scope would be six to nine months” for a project of this type today.

Case history 2

Another
utility with an ageing 685-MW steam unitupgraded its station excitation controls with Ovation-based capability.
“You don’t think much about excitation systems until they don’t work,” the
presenter said. Indeed, one of the project drivers was four unit trips attributed
to excitation in one year. The other driver was obsolescence—replacement parts
for the original Brown Boveri generator excitation controls were unavailable.

“Emerson
not only had a reasonable delivery schedule (less than 12 months), it was the
most ‘open’ of the systems on the market,” said the presenter. He also noted
that Emerson was good about working through issues such as lack of adequate
cooling capacity in some of the cabinets, an overheated transformer phase which
had to be replaced, and failure of the excitation transformer. During the last
event, oscillography built into the Ovation system protected the generator.

Case history 3

A
utility with a 1230-MW plant acquired from investors and equipped with four 1 ×
1 combined cycles had as its objective “consolidating to as few control systems
as possible,” leaving, however, the GT controls to the OEM because of the
long-term services agreement (LTSA). The following were part of the project:

Replaced the Bently Nevada vibration monitoring system with an Ovation Machinery Health Monitor.

Replaced Alstom P320 controls on the steam turbine/generator.

Replaced the Alstom exciter cabinet with Ovation.

Unified alarms to one 40-in. monitor in the control room.

Added Ovation supervisory M&D for the gas turbines.

Upgraded the Mark Ve GT controls to Mark VI, with the graphics replicated in the Ovation platform.

Some
of the physical plant modifications which came with the project included new
gland seal steam valves, instrumentation, and pressure control scheme;
instrument calibrations; valve rebuilds; new attemperator valve installed with
new automation logic; 6000 I/O points looped and functionally checked; addition
of an 800,000-gal fire water tank; and 480-V bus feed rebuilt.

Overall,
troubleshooting hours have been reduced, 25-35 minutes have been shaved off of
a cold start, and the spares inventory has been lowered. Two “lessons learned”
offered to the audience were being more realistic about the project duration
and the need for training (no prior Ovation experience at this site), and
having a third-party review for the Alstom steam-turbine logic conversion.

Case history 4

A
Midwest utilityaccomplished an
Ovation retrofit for a 938-MW Toshiba steam turbine/generator. What makes this
project notable is that the unit is only eight years old. The main project
driver was that OEM support was “non-existent.” The plant was also able to take
advantage of a planned long outage involving boiler retuning, and a ST/G major
outage.

Scope
included complete logic conversion from the OEM-supplied controls to Ovation,
supervisory I&C, overspeed protection, main turbine and boiler-feed-pump
turbine drives, fully automated turbine startup, rotor stress calculator, and
other “integrated enhancements.” A similar retrofit project was conducted for a
large utility in the Southeast. The presenter noted that they still “have a few
issues to work out.”

Case history 5

A
peaking gas-turbine facilitywith
four simple-cycle units in Wisconsin added diesel engine/generators, black-start
capability, and replaced an “obsolete vibration monitoring system.” The Bently
Nevada racks were replaced, but the existing GE/Bently sensors were re-used. A
new set of controllers for each unit was added, along with the Emerson PeakVue
product integrated into the Ovation system. According to the presenter, there
are “no longer any data links to maintain.” CCJ